By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary- General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 29th May, 1986:
DAP to launch nation-wide campaign protest against Ng Yee Kuan, Susie Teoh, Tang Yu Fong cases and to defend basic parental rights over their children at the Malacca DAP Ceramah on Monday, June 2, 1986.
The MCA legal bureau chairman, Datuk Kok Wee kiat, said that the MCA may seek to amend the Constitution to clearly affirm the rights of parents to determine their children’s education and religion up to the age of 18.
I am glad that the MCA leaders are at last waking up to the seriousness of an endless series of cases where parents found that they have lost their rights over their children who had been forced to convert to Islam.
In all these cases, the MCA would invariably be the first to be contacted, and they would invariably refuse to help- asking the parents to accept the ‘loss’ of their daughter or son.
For this reason, the people must doubt the sincerity of the MCA’s sudden awareness of this problem. If the MCA leadership is really concerned, why is it the MCA leaders have not raised the Susie Teoh case in the Cabinet, and ask, for instance, that the Attorney- General, Tan Sri Abu Talib, should be joined as a party in the Susie Teoh case to argue on behalf of the Government that Teoh Teng Huat, father of Susie Teoh, has the constitutional right to determine the religion of his underaged daughter?
The DAP will launch a nation- wide campaign to protest against the Ng Yee Kuan, Susie Teoh, Tang Yu Fong cases, so that such forced conversions leading to family break-ups and the violation of parental rights are put to a halt.
It is indeed a great tragedy that four years ago, the Malaysian Chinese expected a great ‘political breakthrough’ of their rights, as a result of the MCA’s landslide victory and the Gerakan Tung/ Chiau Chung’s ‘Attack into the Barisan Nasional to rectify Barisan Nasional’ slogan.
However, in these four years, the Malaysian Chinese have no not only failed to retrieve their lost rights, but have faced unprecedented erosion of more of their status and rights to the extent that parents are losing the rights over their sons and daughters.
The DAP nation-wide campaign to defend the parental rights of Malaysian to determine the education and religion of their children will be launched in Malacca at a DAP Ceramah at Pay Fong Chinese Secondary School on Monday noght, June 2, 1986, and I call on every Malaysian to respond and support this campaign so that there will be no more new Ng Yee Kuan, Susie Teoh or Tang Yu Fong cases.
This nation-wide campaign to defend the parental rights to determine the education and religion of their children will be taken to every part of Malaysia.
Police action on Sabah’s March riots not the police’s most brilliant history.
Inspector- General of police, Tan Sri Haniff Omar, said the police had submitted investigation papers on about 100 people, including politicians, involved in Sabah’s March riots to the Attorney- General for action. The police’s record on the Sabah March riots is not the police force’s most brilliant and distinguished history.
I hope the Attorney- General’s Chambers would not compare with the police in procrastination over Sabah’s March riots offenders. What has happened to the efficiency, competence and action- orientation which the Mahathir Government promised the people in the 1982 general elections? The Attorney- General must not be very coalition, but most indifferent when dealing with grave crimes committed by either the supporters or members of the coalition government.